The story is told in first person point of view or perspective. This is because in the story, there are many "I"s, which explains that it is told by a certain character. For example, in the first paragraph of the story, there are phrases such as "I caught", "I went", "I had", "I hardly think", and so on. This is interesting because the readers are able to know the character's feelings and thoughts directly from the story.

On the first page of the story, the character mentions something about gold francs. "I had eighty francs (gold francs) to last me the rest of the month..." Gold francs had been circulated in France from 1800 to 1914, and this suggests that the story took place in that time period. However, it is quite unlikely that the story took place in the 1800s because at that time, France was a pandemonium after the French Revolution had ended and there were wars between European nations. People would not have gone to restaurants and had casual luncheons since poverty was common. It is also unlikely that the story took place in the 1850s because that is the time where France had begun to industrialize, lower-class and middle-class citizens were still in poverty and they had to work in industrial areas to earn money. There were still wars at that time such as the Franco-Prussion war in the 1870s, and going to restaurants would not be the best thing to do. However, in the 1890s onwards, France had industrialized rapidly and lower-class and middle-class citizens had emerged from poverty. Although there were still political tensions among the European nations that actually lead to World War I, France was generally peaceful in the 1900s. Going to restaurants was likely to happen and people at time were wealthy as the Americans before the Great Depression started. Nevertheless, the story took place in the 1900s.

The story also took place in a French restaurant at the Luxembourg because in the story, the wom